Sorry to those of you who were looking forward to seeing Aquaman 2 next spring. While it was announced earlier this year that the sequel, officially titled Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, would arrive on March 17, 2023, that’s no longer happening. We’ll now have to an extra nine months for the upcoming DC movie’s arrival, and that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as there are a lot of other Warner Bros. release shakeups that have been announced.
Per the latest scheduling rearrangement at the studio, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has been moved to December 25, 2023, meaning it will come out basically five full years after its predecessor. As a result, Shazam! Fury of the Gods will no longer come out on December 16, 2022 (another date that previously belonged to The Lost Kingdom), as it’s been moved into that March 17 slot. Deadline noted in its report that because of this change, not only will the Shazam! sequel potentially be able to replicate the kind of success The Batman had with its March release, but it will also have access to IMAX screens on this new date, because Avatar: The Way of Water is holding those for its December theatrical rollout.
That does it as far as the DC shakeups for 2023 go, as The Flash is still expected to come out on June 23. However, there’s more to go over from other corners of Warner Bros. Pictures. For one thing, the House Party reboot and Evil Dead Rise are now respectively slated for December 9 of this year and April 21, 2023. More importantly, neither of these movies will be made exclusively available to HBO Max subscribers anymore; they’ve been changed to theatrical releases. In Evil Dead Rise’s case, Deadline reports that its trailer “played gangbusters at CineEurope,” hence why it’s now heading to the big screen.
The other big Warner Bros. release shakeups include The Nun 2 opening on September 8, 2023, and the big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, which has been slated for April 21, 2023, being temporarily taken off the calendar. Salem’s Lot is still in post-production and will reportedly snag a later 2023 release date at some point. Warner Bros. has also put in an “untitled event film” for February 10, 2023. As a result of these changes, this leaves Don’t Worry Darling, Black Adam and House Party as the only movies WB has left to distribute domestically for the remainder of 2022.
Going back to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, there’s a potential predicament that pops up as a result of this latest date change. In late July, we learned that Ben Affleck will reprise Bruce Wayne/Batman in the sequel, and it was reported a few days later that originally the plan was for Michael Keaton to appear as his version of that same character instead. However, that was when Aquaman 2 was still set to come out after The Flash, which will see Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen exploring the multiverse and running into Keaton’s Batman, as well as the story ending with the main DCEU reality being altered in certain ways. Test audiences reportedly found Keaton’s presence in The Lost Kingdom “confusing,” so Affleck was brought in to reshoot that scene. Because Aquaman 2 is once again set to arrive after The Flash, does mean the original Keaton scene will be used, or will Affleck’s stay in there?
Either way, now the landscape of the 2022 movies releases and 2023 movie releases looks a lot different. CinemaBlend will continue to share further updates on that front, whether it’s from Warner Bros. again or another studio.
